Originally published 2020-12-04.
The "third monolith" of late 2020 appeared on Pine Mountain in Atascadero, a small city on California's Central Coast roughly halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Hikers found the shiny, three-sided metal pillar on 2 December 2020. It was torn down within a day, rebuilt by its makers, and turned out to be the work of a local father, his son and a friend, not aliens or a secretive art collective.
It followed two better-known pillars, one in the Utah desert and one on a hill in Romania, both of which had already vanished. Here is how the three fit together and why a single mysterious object set off a worldwide copying craze.
Where the California monolith stood
Early reports placed the pillar in Los Angeles or the Bay Area. In fact it stood near the summit of the Pine Mountain trail in Atascadero, in San Luis Obispo County, about a two-mile hike from the trailhead. Photos spread on social media on the morning of 2 December, and local news crews followed.
The object was about 10 feet tall, hollow and silver, with three sides like the Utah original, and reportedly weighed around 200 pounds. Unlike the desert pillar, which had been cut into the rock, it looked less securely fixed, which raised safety concerns for hikers.
By the next morning it was gone. A group of young men had driven several hours, pulled it down and left a wooden cross in its place, broadcasting the removal on a livestream. The cross disappeared too. Atascadero's mayor, Heather Moreno, said the city was upset that the men had come into the community to vandalise the monolith.
The Utah original and why it was removed
The craze began on 18 November 2020, when staff from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources spotted a gleaming pillar from a helicopter while counting bighorn sheep in a remote red-rock canyon in San Juan County. It stood about 9.5 feet tall, made of thin metal sheets riveted together into a hollow triangular prism.
The resemblance to the black slab in Stanley Kubrick's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey made it a global news story. Satellite images later showed it had been installed between July and October 2016, so it had stood unnoticed for about four years. Some critics compared it to the sculptures of the late minimalist artist John McCracken, though his gallery eventually stepped back from that idea, and the maker has never been confirmed.
Officials kept the location secret, but internet sleuths found it within a day or two, and hundreds of people drove out over fragile desert ground. On the night of 27 November, four Moab residents, including the extreme sports athletes Andy Lewis and Sylvan Christensen, toppled the pillar and carried it away in pieces in a wheelbarrow. They posted about it on social media and said they had acted to protect the land.
Christensen wrote that the area "wasn't physically prepared for the population shift", describing visitors parking on plants and leaving human waste where there are no toilets. Lewis later handed the pieces to the federal Bureau of Land Management, which noted that installing any structure on public land without permission is illegal.
(The Instagram post originally embedded here is no longer available.)
Romania's short-lived pillar
The second monolith was photographed on 27 November 2020 on Batca Doamnei hill near the city of Piatra Neamț in north-eastern Romania. The hill is known for the remains of an ancient Dacian fortress, which made the sudden appearance of a metal pillar there all the more striking.
That structure also disappeared within days, reportedly overnight and without fuss. Its builders were not identified at the time. Its rougher finish suggested a local imitation rather than the work of whoever made the Utah piece.
Who built the California monolith
Unlike the other two, the Atascadero pillar's creators came forward within days. Travis Kenney, who owns a metal fabrication shop, his father Wade McKenzie and their friend Jarred Riddle said they built it after seeing the Utah and Romania stories. They were inspired by 2001 and wanted to give people something to marvel at during a year dominated by illness and politics.
They had planned to take it down themselves after a few days. When vandals got there first, the men built a sturdier version from structural steel, set it in roughly 750 pounds of concrete and carried it back up the mountain within about a day. They called the project an act of love, not of protest, and said they hoped it would draw people out onto the trail. Local media reported that the replacement was itself damaged again and repaired.
So the third monolith was not a mystery for long. It was a homage to the first, made by people who enjoyed the puzzle and wanted to join in.
Why the monoliths spread around the world
Once the idea caught on, copies appeared almost everywhere. By mid-2024, at least 245 similar pillars had been recorded worldwide, from the Isle of Wight in England to Pittsburgh and Las Vegas in the United States. Some were artists' tributes, some were pranks and some were promotional stunts by local businesses.
Several things made the idea irresistible in late 2020. The shape was simple to build, the film reference was instantly recognisable, and a pandemic year left many people at home, online and hungry for a harmless mystery. Each new pillar also created its own small treasure hunt, as people tried to find the location before it disappeared.
It is tempting to imagine a single group behind them all, and at least one art collective briefly claimed credit before admitting the Utah piece was not theirs. Looking alike does not prove a shared maker, though. The evidence points to one unknown original and a wave of independent imitators.
Art on public land: the lasting lesson
The monolith story is fun, but it also raises a serious question about what happens when a hidden spot goes viral. In Utah, the problem was never the pillar itself, which had stood quietly for years. It was the sudden crowd of cars, campers and sightseers on land with no roads, parking or toilets.
That pattern repeats at many places that become famous online, from desert arches to lakes and waterfalls. If you go looking for something you saw on social media, a few habits help:
- stay on established roads and trails;
- carry out everything you bring in, including waste;
- respect closures and private land;
- avoid sharing exact coordinates of fragile sites.
As for public art, land managers in the United States are clear that installing anything on public land needs permission. The original 1970s land artists, who built huge works in the American desert, generally worked with landowners. The Utah monolith's maker did not, and that is one reason the pillar is no longer there.
Sources: CalCoastNews: Monolith appears near hiking trail in Atascadero (3 December 2020); Associated Press via WDIV: California monolith emerges after Utah, Romania works exit; WYMT/Gray News: Creators of California monolith come forward; Wikipedia: Utah monolith. Removal statements: Sylvan Christensen (Instagram, @sylvanslacks).
COMMENTS